The invention relates to an information processing system with a sub-system for processing video data. The invention relates in particular, but not exclusively, to home theater equipment. The invention also relates to an electronic circuit with a video line multiplication device, and to a method of multiplying video lines.
A home entertainment system is equipment intended for the domestic environment and capable of processing in a synergetic manner audio, video and graphics information that is being supplied by a variety of information sources. An example of a home entertainment system is the Destination D5-200 computer of Gateway 2000. See, for example, the article xe2x80x9cGateway 2000: Destination D5-200xe2x80x9d, Bruce Brown, PC Magazine edition of May 6, 1997. This computer has all its user-control functionalities, regarding information-content selection, bundled in software applications run on a single operating system.
Computer video and television video can be achieved through scanning the phosphors of a CRT with an electron beam. The beam begins at the top left of the CRT and scans horizontal lines from left to right across the screen, illuminating pixel after pixel in the process. When the beam reaches the bottom right of the screen, it has completed a field in case of interlaced video or a frame in case of non-interlaced video. The conventional TV standards such as NTSC and PAL were established to create images that are acceptable when viewed from a distance of about five times the picture height on relatively small displays. These standards have also been taken into account in the format of movies stored on a laser disc (e.g., PAL, NTSC) or on a DVD (e.g., MPEG2 ML/MP) in view of the higher resolution.
Home theater equipment typically is used with high-end display devices: large display screens, such as those of front-end or rear-end projection TV""s or high-resolution displays such as those used with PC""s. Conventional processing of digital video in the well established video formats cause severe degradation of the perceived image quality when viewed on large or high-resolution displays. One of the undesired results is the visibility of the line structure.
A solution to the problem of the undesired visibility of the line structure on a large screen or on a high-resolution screen is to use digital video processing techniques to increase the number of lines that make up the image. Separate line multiplication equipment is commercially available but is rather expensive, ranging from the $2,000 (e.g., the Lancia of Extron Electronics) to the $34,000 (Snell and Wilcox).
It is an object of the invention to achieve line multiplying of professional or near-professional quality in a home theater of the type specified in the preamble, but at a substantially lower cost.
To this end, the invention provides an information processing system comprising a video sub-system with a line multiplication device for processing video data, and comprising a graphics controller with a scaler. The line multiplication device is coupled to the graphics controller for achieving further line multiplying via the scaler.
In the preferred embodiment, the system of the invention is a home theater comprising a synergetic combination of video data processing equipment and a PC. In the preferred embodiment, the video sub-system has a de-interlacer/line doubler chip, e.g., the gm VLD8 DICE Video Line Doubler of Genesis Microchip, Inc., to process digital interlaced video input data, and the PC has a graphics controller, e.g., a 3DImàge975 of Trident Microsystems, Inc., for generating graphics data. The graphics controller has a scaling capability. As known a scaler can control vertical underscan or overscan by multiplying pixels or interpolating between pixels. A video data path involving the de-interlacer/line doubler and the scaler in cascade provides line quadrupling of a near-professional quality.